Love, Life, and Everything in Between: Cyberbulling and the issues that arise

I am pretty sure that for as long as humans have existed, there have been some type of bullying. The strongest picking on the weakest, the richest picking on the poorest, etc. The only issue in this day and age is the fact that social media has come in to make things way worse on a viral scale. At least back in the day, it was bullying done by word of mouth, not a viral post on social media.

You would think that as people grow older, they stopped all that useless gossip but the only thing that has changed is their age, not their behavior. I went a pretty hot-shit high school where the rich were RICH and the middle-class seemed poor and was there bullying. The mean girls writing awful things on people's lockers, gossip spreading like wildfire, but what people don't understand is that it never ends. You never really leave high school, the world becomes one big high school.

The type of bullying that real hits home for me is cyberbullying, where the people who post stuff online are too much of pussies to say those awful things to your face and they will post their comments online for the whole world to see. My good friend and cousin both past away because they didn't have enough strength to fight against it. Not that it is their fault at all, but they just couldn't handle reading any more stuff about them online. When my cousin past away, the people that bullied her messaged me saying that they were so sorry for my loss, but my first reply to them was "You have NO right to say that because if it wasn't for you, she wouldn't have ended her life. It was because of your comments that made her do what she did."

The people that do these type of things do not understand the issues and consequences of their actions. They think that they are powerful for saying that things that they say because it hurts those people, but they don't take responsibilities for their words.

Now, it is my turn to tell my story.

A couple days ago, a situation happened that caused someone to post something about me online not knowing the full situation. The story was that I borrowed money from someone at the hostel that I was staying at and didn't pay the person back on time and that person got pissed off and filed a police report against me over 18RM ($4). However, even before I knew about the police report, I paid that person back and all the other people that I owed money to. Everything seemed to have settled and I moved on to another hostel thinking that everything was fine. Little did I know that the receptionist of that hostel where I owed the money to people went and put a viral post of me on the Facebook group of the place that I am staying saying that other hostels, hotels, and places should not let me stay because I stole money from people. Strangers that I didn't even know started commenting on the post calling me a parasite and saying that I was a piece of garbage and a liar even when they didn't know that I had actually paid everyone back. People were saying that I never paid people back even when they physically saw that I paid people back and even though I had the proof to show that I paid people back, the damage was done. Not only had she put the post up, but she also put up a picture of me, my ID, and the police report. (that was already ripped up) Which is completely illegal. At first, I was upset and sad that something like this about me had gone viral. I was even scared to walk down the street because people were commenting about where I was and I was scared about what people might do to me. I didn't even have a place to stay because no one would let me stay and I ended up sleeping on the beach. However, now I have the proof through bank statements and PayPal that I have paid people back, so now rather than being scared and stressed I am ready to fight back and prove those people wrong. Unlike my cousin and my good friend, I didn't crumble under the pressure of what people were saying about me. I am ready to fight for myself and show that I am not scared of what people say about me on social media.

The one thing that I am trying to rack my brain around is how this person decided to do what they did. She is a mother with a daughter my age first of all. If someone had done something like this to her daughter, she would do anything to try and get the post taken down. I know that my mom would if she was here. She would not allow her daughter to go through what I went through. Another thing is that when I was trying to transfer the money to people I was having issues and rather than trying to help me, she didn't want to because she didn't want to be involved. Like, seriously? she saw that I was trying to send it. I mean, I understand why she did it, it was to hurt me, but it just doesn't seem right.

People have to understand the repercussions of their actions, I mean I learned from my lesson and paid everyone back with the money I got and because of that I don't even have any more money for myself. They may not think that it hurts people on that type of scale where they would end their life, but everyone is different and some people don't have the capacity to fight for their rights.

So, the next time any of you plan on hurting people on social media, I suggest that you think twice and really understand the situation that the person is in before you decide to hurt them even more.